Transaction property

The transaction has the four properties. These are used to maintain consistency in a
database, before and after the transaction.

Property of Transaction
1. Atomicity
2. Consistency
3. Isolation
4. Durability
Atomicity
o It states that all operations of the transaction take place at once if not, the
transaction is aborted.
 o There is no midway, i.e., the transaction cannot occur partially. Each transaction is
treated as one unit and either run to completion or is not executed at all.

Atomicity involves the following two operations:

Abort: If a transaction aborts then all the changes made are not visible.

Commit: If a transaction commits then all the changes made are visible.

Example: Let's assume that following transaction T consisting of T1 and T2. A consists of
Rs 600 and B consists of Rs 300. Transfer Rs 100 from account A to account B.

T1 T2

Read(A) Read(B)
A:= A-100 Y:= Y+100
Write(A) Write(B)

After completion of the transaction, A consists of Rs 500 and B consists of Rs 400.

If the transaction T fails after the completion of transaction T1 but before completion of
transaction T2, then the amount will be deducted from A but not added to B. This shows
the inconsistent database state. In order to ensure correctness of database state, the
transaction must be executed in entirety.

Consistency
o The integrity constraints are maintained so that the database is consistent before
and after the transaction.
o The execution of a transaction will leave a database in either its prior stable state
or a new stable state.
o The consistent property of database states that every transaction sees a
consistent database instance.
o The transaction is used to transform the database from one consistent state to
another consistent state.

For example: The total amount must be maintained before or after the transaction.
1. Total before T occurs = 600+300=900
2. Total after T occurs= 500+400=900

Therefore, the database is consistent. In the case when T1 is completed but T2 fails, then
inconsistency will occur.

Isolation
o It shows that the data which is used at the time of execution of a transaction
cannot be used by the second transaction until the first one is completed.
o In isolation, if the transaction T1 is being executed and using the data item X,
then that data item can't be accessed by any other transaction T2 until the
transaction T1 ends.
o The concurrency control subsystem of the DBMS enforced the isolation property.

Durability
o The durability property is used to indicate the performance of the database's
consistent state. It states that the transaction made the permanent changes.
o They cannot be lost by the erroneous operation of a faulty transaction or by the
system failure. When a transaction is completed, then the database reaches a
state known as the consistent state. That consistent state cannot be lost, even in
the event of a system's failure.
o The recovery subsystem of the DBMS has the responsibility of Durability property.

SERIALIZABILITY
A schedule is serialized if it is equivalent to a serial schedule. A concurrent schedule
must ensure it is the same as if executed serially means one after another. It refers to
the sequence of actions such as read, write, abort, commit are performed in a serial
manner.
Example
Let’s take two transactions T1 and T2,
If both transactions are performed without interfering each other then it is called as
serial schedule, it can be represented as follows −

T1 T2

READ1(A)

WRITE1(A)

READ1(B)

C1

READ2(B)

WRITE2(B)

READ2(B)

C2
Non serial schedule − When a transaction is overlapped between the transaction T1
and T2.

Example
Consider the following example −

T1 T2

READ1(A)

WRITE1(A)

READ2(B)

WRITE2(B)

READ1(B)

WRITE1(B)

READ1(B)
Types of serializability
There are two types of serializability −

View serializability
A schedule is view-serializability if it is viewed equivalent to a serial schedule.
The rules it follows are as follows −
 T1 is reading the initial value of A, then T2 also reads the initial value of A.
 T1 is the reading value written by T2, then T2 also reads the value written by T1.
 T1 is writing the final value, and then T2 also has the write operation as the final
value.

Conflict serializability
It orders any conflicting operations in the same way as some serial execution. A pair of
operations is said to conflict if they operate on the same data item and one of them is a
write operation.
That means
 Readi(x) readj(x) - non conflict read-read operation
 Readi(x) writej(x) - conflict read-write operation.
 Writei(x) readj(x) - conflict write-read operation.
 Writei(x) writej(x) - conflict write-write operation.